


my feet don't dance like they did with you

by darkofthemorning



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Based on a 5 Seconds of Summer Song, Death, F/M, Flashbacks, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Growing Old Together, Ice Skating, Love, Memories, Old Age, Old Married Couple, Older Characters, Sad?, Skating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-07 15:37:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18413597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkofthemorning/pseuds/darkofthemorning
Summary: The first time mentioned that of the two of them, he would have to be the first to go, she gasped and swat at his arm, scolding him for adopting such an awful mindset. The preceding times followed a similar pattern until her response was reduced to a long groan and a “shut up.”He would be the first. He had to be.But she proved him wrong.Or: old VM (or...old M)





	my feet don't dance like they did with you

**Author's Note:**

> Wow it's been a while. Basically this semester has really been kicking my ass so I haven't had much time to write, but we're nearing the end and I think I can see the light. I wrote this little thing in between studying sessions (lol who am I kidding...this was 100% a form of extreme procrastination). 
> 
> It's loosely based on "Ghost of You" by 5 Seconds of Summer (obsessed). If you've never heard that song, go listen to it right now. If you have listened to it, good. It's what she deserves. Listen to it while reading if you want to really get a kick out of this one.
> 
> Enjoy.

He always thought that of the two of them, he’d be the first to go.

It just makes sense, right?

It wasn’t that his already unstable health was deteriorating at an exponentially higher rate than hers, or that he was older after all and it would be expected that she’d outlive him. In fact, their graying hair and pruning skin and weary bones had nothing to do with it.

It was both so much simpler and so much more complicated than that, something that he is unsure he will ever be able to articulate with the proper words. But if there’s one thing he knew, so certainly weaved into the small holes which now reside in his once-strong bones, it’s that he would never be able to live without her. 

She had been his cornerstone for as long as he could remember. It was evident from the second she decided to continue skating with him even after he had slipped up, when they were nothing but naive kids with dreams bigger than they were, that she would be around for a while. 

She ironed out the reckless wrinkles in his ego and painted the delicate stars in his eyes and proudly stood by his side as his partner-in-goodness, chest high and invisible cape blowing wildly behind her, even on the days where he was more like the Joker than the Robin to her Batman. He doesn’t think there was a time where he didn’t need her support. She was his other half; the half that kept his heart beating and lungs breathing, the half that made sure he was his absolute best self.

He loved her for it. He  _ loves _ her for it.

He’s always been fairly sure she could more easily adapt to living without him, though, even if she dismissed him and pretended as though it weren’t true. He can’t lie, it would have been hard for her at first, having the side of the bed where he once lay in a constant state of sharp cold, or having the heavy silence sing reprises of his off-key singing as he made poached eggs in the morning. But he thinks she would have handled it better than him; she had such resilience embedded into her being. 

She rarely needed a crutch. He knew this quite well. He admired her for it, for this trait that he could only reach for but never touch. There was no one he knew with as much strength, both physically and mentally, as her. It was incredible how she could power through and conquer even the toughest obstacles, the ones that would spit and laugh in her face and tell her she was a fool. It was only on the darkest of her dark days where she unmistakably needed him, and he knew it just with a simple glance or touch or  _ feeling _ . It was during those times he would anchor her to reality, allow her to grip him as though if she let go, she would float away into the hellish thoughts that tried to pry her from his tight embrace. He let her tears carve rivers down his spine and absorbed her sobs into his chest as he held her, with no intention of leaving.

Yet even on days like those, she knew the map of her life as well as she knew her own name. Everything she had known or knows or will know was as organized as the matching pastel pink stationery she got from Indigo when she was twenty-three, the abundance of pens and papers and books and clips all placed just so on the large, white desk in the corner of her office.

 

_ “Of all the things you could be obsessed with, you chose  _ office supplies _?” His brow was raised as she showed off the most ridiculous matching set he had ever seen. She had her arm out, palm up as though she were showing off a top prize on a game show, eyes crinkled with admiration for her new items. _

 

_ “These are  _ not _ office supplies. It’s  _ stationery _ , Scott.” Her arms quickly crossed over her chest, offense laced in her words as she narrowed her gaze. _

 

_ “Ok sorry,  _ fancy paper _. What even is the point of it? Like, all of it? And why does it all have to match? I am willing to bet that this was all ridiculously overpriced, and you probably could have bought  _ normal _ stuff for a fraction of the price.” _

 

_ “But look at how pretty it is! This is, like, the exact shade of pink that’s my favourite.” The irritation quickly vanished from her voice, replaced with sweet appreciation. _

 

_ “Pink is pink is pink,” he said, waving his hand in the air to emphasise how little he cared. “Are you even going to use it?” _

 

_ Silence. _

 

_ “Tessa.” _

 

_ “It’s too pretty to use!” _

 

_ “I cannot believe you.” He picked up one of the matte gold-and-pink pens, pretending to examine it before over-exaggerating his efforts to put it back perfectly into place. “Waste.” _

 

_ “Is not!” She was like a little kid, stopping her foot and pouting at him.  _

 

_ She really was the cutest. _

 

_ “Hm...yeah, waste.” He dragged out the word this time, earning an eye roll and playful slap to his bicep from his best friend. _

 

_ “Ugh. Whatever.” She tried to hide the smile creeping across her face as she turned around to recommence her house tour.  _

 

_ The key word was  _ tried _. _

 

One of his favourite things to do was iterate how much he appreciated having her in his life: her strange obsessions with things like stationary, her unnecessarily complex vocabulary, her bubbly giggle, her thunderous laugh, her perfectionism, her accomplishments, her fears, her brokenness. She was his lifeline, and there was never a second that passed where he wanted to live without her. He never said this directly to her though, no, not until he proposed. He said it in more subtle ways beforehand: in the way he held her, in the way he’d do random “just because” things for her, in the way he spoke of her in interviews or to sold-out arenas or even to strangers he interacted with in the streets of whatever city he found himself in. 

It wasn’t until after they were married, maybe even a few years after that, that he first mentioned that of the two of them, he would have to be the first to go. The first time, she gasped and swat at his arm, scolding him for adopting such an awful mindset. The preceding times followed a similar pattern until her response was reduced to a long groan and a “shut up.” 

He would be the first. He had to be.

But she proved him wrong.

He will never forget the days and nights and weeks and months spent in that god awful white room, the smell of sterilization resting unpleasantly in his lungs. He sat on what felt like the equivalent of fabric-covered rocks for hours without moving, holding her hand as he watched her slowly exhale the remnants of her life into plastic oxygen tubes. 

There has never been a feeling quite like watching her slip through his fingers as easily as dry sand and not being able to do anything but let it happen. He calls it painfully numbing, for lack of a better term; it made his heart ache with rivers of tears and sleepless nights, but somehow simultaneously felt absolutely nothing. 

It was hard at first, after that steady rhythm of her heartbeat suddenly crescendoed into that one long, horrendous tone that still haunts his dreams. 

He had left the hospital alone for months before that. But that night, there was a new heaviness to his journey back as he attempted to understand how his life had changed in a fraction of a second. Painfully numb, so painfully numb as he got into bed and drifted into a dreamless sleep.

He had gotten up the following morning, rapidly dressing and eating breakfast in anticipation to go visit the love of his life once again. It wasn’t until he put on his little black bowler hat, adjusting it in the mirror, that it registered that she was no longer there.

It was hard.

Hell, it’s still hard.

It doesn’t feel like she’s gone, though. Maybe it’s because it hasn’t been all that long. Or maybe it has been long, but due to his lack of awareness of time it just feels like it hasn’t been long. But either way, she isn’t  _ really _ gone. There’s little pieces of her scattered throughout his days, throughout his home and his mind and his heart that remind him of her.

There’s that picture of them from 2018 on The Wall, the year they won two gold medals at the Olympics. He could never forget that year. The Wall, a major selling point for her when they were first house hunting after their engagement in 2021, was essentially a regular wall but with a shallow nook to hang a large statement photo in. He thought it was the most comical and unnecessary thing, but she was absolutely infatuated with the strange feature. Seeing her green eyes sparkle in that way they did made his heart melt, so he pretended he loved it too. But a photo that held enough sentiment to be worthy of being placed in The Wall was what they both failed to consider as they signed the papers to their new home. 

They couldn’t just  _ leave _ the ridiculous hole empty.

They had been arguing about which photo to hang for hours, brown cardboard boxes piled high around them as though they were spectators standing by, debating which of the couple’s sides to take. 

Trying to figure out what photo to use was a pain in the fucking ass.

 

_ “Why can’t we just go to HomeSense or something and buy a random canvas photo of like, I don’t know, flowers or something and just slap it up there?” he asked her as he cut open a box to begin sorting out its contents. He was getting impatient and was pretty sure that the nook was beginning to mock them for their indecisiveness. _

 

_ “I want the photo to be of us, though.” she whined as she began to assemble a tall, glass bookshelf in the corner of the living room.  _

 

_ “Okay, we have literally been skating for almost a quarter of a century. Is there not a single photo of us skating that floats your boat?” _

 

_ “If we hung a photo of us skating in our house, I would always be critiquing it. You know that.” _

 

_ “Really? I mean, I guess, but there’s only so much of a photo you can critique.” _

 

_ “That’s what you think. Why do you think I’ve never hung any photos of us skating in any place I’ve lived?”  _

 

_ “It’s not like the entire program is going up there. It’s literally just, like, one photo. Just one. Why are you being like this?” He looked up from the box he was sifting through to look up at her, head tilted slightly. _

 

_ “I don’t know...I just don’t want the literal focus of our whole house to be us skating. It seems weird. Like, we weren’t  _ just _ skaters. We did other things, you know.” _

 

_ “Yes, we did.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her from across the room. _

 

_ “Scott!” Her eyes widened as she practically yelled his name, sending him into a fit of laughter. _

 

_ “What? It’s true.” _

 

_ “Ugh. Well one: you’re the absolute worst. Two: no skating photos, okay? Save those for the smaller frames that no one pays attention to.” _

 

_ “Tess—” _

 

_ “ _ Tess, _ ” she mocked in a high-pitched tone, her face scrunched and hands placed on her hips. _

 

_ Each time he tried to speak for the following few minutes, she made louder, random noises to cut him off. _

 

_ “How the fuck have I put up with this for 24 years?” He looked over his shoulder, staring into the non-existent video camera positioned in the entryway as he motioned with a thumb towards his fiancée _ .

 

_ “It’s because you love me,” she said, sweet as honey, prancing over to where he crouched to throw her arms around him.  _

 

_ “Yeah, whatever, shut up.” _

 

She had mentioned at some point during the debate that she didn’t want a photo from one of the countless big events they attended to go there. She didn’t want a photo that was shared with the whole world or taken by a fancy photographer or anything like that. She wanted something that was personal, genuine, candid, meaningful. It was so much easier to go through photos that fit this criteria she outlined. 

They eventually settled on one of them walking in the Olympic village, hand in hand, clad in Team Canada gear with their backs to the camera. She is mid-skip, appearing as though she’s hovering above the glowing, snowy sidewalk, his head thrown back in laughter.

Even if he doesn’t quite remember what he ate for breakfast, he does remember that moment and how ready they felt to take the ice during their time in Pyeongchang. It felt quite fitting to use that photo; it was one of the best months of his life, after his wedding of course. They felt more ready than they ever had going into an Olympics, or any competition for that matter. They knew they deserved gold. Gold was what they were aiming for. And gold is what they received. 

He looks at the shot every day, admiring the way it’s fading and discolouring from the decades and decades it has spent in the spotlight. He smiles at the memory until the prompter off-stage cues her absence and forces him to get back into character.

Whenever he goes into the cupboard to choose a cup to pour his bitter coffee in, he is faced with that one she used much too often. She adored the little thing so much; he found it both adorable and absolutely absurd.

She bought it so long ago. He thinks it might have been after they got married. It was probably on one of their random afternoon shopping mall outings when they just wanted to get out and move rather than sit in a coffee shop or restaurant or at home. They didn’t do it often, as they would take a night in over throwing themselves into the busy streets and lives of other people, but it was nice to accompany their counterpart and turn a quick errand to buy printer ink into a two-hour adventure into nearly every store. She was usually the one doing the venturing; he would have much rathered waiting outside and letting her do her thing, but he always joined her. It was more fun that way.

How the ceramic has managed to live such a long life, he’s quite unsure. She’s always been fairly careful with her delicate belongings, so maybe the mug owes its longevity to such a trait. He loved that about her, that cautiousness and gracefulness in her every move.

Pristine white with a single thin, black stripe around its lower third, it was inexplicably one of the most Tessa things he could think of: simple and elegant, with a hint of fierce passion.

 

_ “I can’t believe you love a fucking  _ mug  _ more than me,” he teased that night, long after they returned home.  _

 

_ He had walked into the kitchen to the sight of her turning the mug in her hands, bright eyes wildly examining it. She looked adorable, hair thrown into one of her signature messy buns and her body clothed in matching pastel pink silk shorts and button-down shirt.  _

 

_ Colour rose to her cheeks as she quickly set it down on the counter. Even with the speed of her movement, she  _ still _ managed to place the cup down so delicately that it barely made a sound.  _

 

_ He bad to bite his tongue to keep himself from laughing. Only she could do such a thing. _

 

_ “Not true,” she replied, arms crossing over her chest.  _

 

_ “Really?” he challenged, walking slowly to where she stood.  _

 

_ “Mmmhm,” she nodded, the corner of her pout twitching upwards into a sly smirk as she allowed him to trap her in the corner where she stood.  _

 

_ God, she was so fucking hot when she did that.  _

 

_ “Then show me,” he whispered as he lowered his face just inches away from hers.  _

 

_ Her eyes fluttered shut for a moment before they shot back open, sweetness replaced with desire, telling him all he needed to know. _

 

She never used any other mug, if she could help it. The white has since discoloured into more of a creamy eggshell colour after continuous use for so many years, the inside stained from the countless times it held steaming coffee for the woman it belonged to. The cup showed its gratitude to the owner by making her one-of-a-kind lipstick print permanent upon its surface. As much as they would scrub, there would always be the faintest hint of red perfectly on the center of the rim, handle on the right side. 

He often forgets about the mug, but it’s the first thing staring right into his hazel eyes as soon as he pulls open the door. The lipstick stain has faded over time, with her lips no longer present to maintain the print. It’s as though the mug laughs in his face now, reminding him of what once was, and what will never again be. 

He can’t bring himself to get rid of it, though.

When he wakes up in the middle of the night, chest heaving and forehead damp from nightmares, he reaches over to her side of the bed. She used to find his hand and take it in hers, rubbing small circles into his palm to calm his wildly beating heart and whisper that everything would be fine as though it were a mantra. 

But now, his hand only finds cool sheets, still neatly pulled up to the stack of pillows that once cradled her fragile head. She spent most of her time in bed before being transferred to the hospital, too weak to do anything but lie there. He bought so many pillows to try and make it more comfortable for her, to prop her up and cushion every inch of her body in an attempt to counteract the aching and fatigue. 

They already had a ton of pillows, but going out to get more gave him a momentary distraction from the harsh reality waiting for him when he returned home.

She had a quirky fascination with pillows for as long as he could remember. He thinks it may have just been a woman thing; he’s almost certain that his mother and aunt and Kate loved decorative pillows as well. But there was no way that any of them idolized pillows as much as she did.

 

_ “What are you doing?” The high-pitched question rushed out of the woman standing in the doorway between their bedroom and the en suite. _

 

_ “Uh...making the bed?” he questioned. Could she not see what he was doing? _

 

_ “Ugh, no you’re not,” she groaned when she saw him making the bed one morning.  _

 

_ “What?” _

 

_ “Scott, it’s wrong. All wrong. Stop.” She stormed over and pried the sheets from his hand, hair wrapped in that elaborate structure on top of her head he’s seen so many times before. “We’ve been living together for like, I don’t know, five years and you  _ still _ don’t know how to properly make the damn bed?” _

 

_ “Ouch. Sorry, I figured you were exhausted, so I wanted to help make your morning easier. You literally hit snooze ten times today. I’m pretty sure that’s a new record.” _

 

_ The glare she directed his way actually terrified him. _

 

_ “God, you’re grumpy today.” He mumbled. _

 

_ He realized how big of a mistake that was as soon as the words left his mouth. _

 

_ “Sorry, what was that?” she shot at him. He’s pretty sure his soul left his body. _

 

_ “Nothing.” _

 

_ “Let me try that again. What was that?” _

 

_ “You’re...uh...lovely today?” Fucking idiot. _

 

_ “Yeah, okay. Go make yourself useful somewhere else.” _

 

_ “Yes ma’am.” _

 

He eventually learned how to make the bed  _ correctly _ , and he’s made it that way ever since. It’s like a reflex now, something he doesn’t need to concentrate on: smooth sheets pulled up to the headboard, the duvet folded over at the top, abundance of pillows arranged in a neat pyramid with the largest at the back and the smallest at the front.

But when he isn’t having nightmares, he’s usually dreaming of her. But not of her wrinkles and gray hair, of her weakness and sickness. He dreams of her youthfulness, of their twenties, of recklessness and fun. Of her long, wavy, brown tresses blowing in the wind. Of green eyes that shine like sea glass caught in the blinding rays of the midday sun. Of bellyaches and tears from uncontrollable laughter.

Somewhere in the mix of giggles and deep breaths, she tells him that everything will be fine. That he’ll be fine without her.

He wants to believe her. 

But he thinks this is the one thing she isn’t right about.

He thinks she isn’t right about him being alright because sometimes, when he’s sitting on that ugly, oversized couch they bought for the living room not too long ago watching Jeopardy, his chest hurts and his eyes sting and knowing that she is no longer snuggled perfectly into his side, yelling the answers at the screen as though she were one of the contestants. She had so much knowledge within her; he knows that she could have easily been on the show and probably even won. He wishes she had gotten the chance. 

But often, just as the pain of missing her becomes unbearable, he sees her standing there in the entryway to the room, leaning against The Wall with her arms crossed and a smirk playing at the corners of her mouth. He can’t help the way his eyes soften into pools of honey at the sight of her again, his one and only. For a few minutes, the hurting vanishes, instead replaced with comfort and warmth in the presence of her love. 

It is usually then that she walks over to him, holding out her frail, shaky hand.

He never hesitates to take it. 

She helps him up from the sofa, locking her right hand with his left as she places her free palm atop his shoulder, his on her waist.

And they dance.

And they dance.

And they dance.

He doesn’t think his feet could ever dance with anyone else like they do with her. They never have, and they never will. The way they move together with an ethereal fluidity is not something hat can so easily be replicated, their steps so perfectly coordinated as they tell the long story of their lives in three/four time.

They dance around the house, through the hallways of distant memories nailed to the walls, to the haunting beat of the silence until she fades away before his eyes and it all comes rushing back to him: 

She’s gone.


End file.
